Speaker Muturi blocks MPs from travelling to Japan to watch volleyball

National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi blocked a number of legislators from travelling to Japan for the FIVB Volleyball Women’s World Championship.

It has emerged that the MPs had requested for a 14-day trip to Tokyo to ‘support’ the Malkia Queens but Muturi reportedly declined.

This did not go down well with a section of the lawmakers who questioned why those who went to Russia to watch the World Cup got approvals despite the fact that Kenya was not participating in the global event.

In June, a number of Kenyan legislators travelled to Russia to enjoy the World Cup tournament.

Those spotted included; Nominated Senator Millicent Omanga, Siaya Senator James Orengo, Sports chair committee Victor Munyaka, Sylvanus Maritim, Peter Kaluma and Wafula Wamunyinyi.

Apparently, they had travelled to benchmark on how to organize a global event but upon their return, they had nothing to show.

It emerged that they lifted thousands of words from sports websites to compile their report.

The entire background information on the tournament, including the hosting, bidding, budget, qualification, draws, transport, match venues and schedules were all lifted word for word from the various sports websites and online search sites.

The section on “Preparation for hosting the World Cup” was a carbon copy of “Planetizen” blog article of 2010 by one Nate Berg and titled “Why hosting a World Cup does not matter for cities.”

The “qualification” part was lifted off Wikipedia search engine, except for one paragraph which notes that “Kenya was knocked out in the second round of the qualifications by Cape Verde.”

The “Ticketing” bit was pulled out in its whole from Fifa.com while the writing on their outings to historical sites were pulled off Moscow.com and Wikipedia. 

Kenyans have been battling debt and rising taxes in recent months and just last week, MPs approved a supplementary budget that saw the government slash its Sh3.026 trillion budget for this year by Sh37.6 billion.

Malkia queens kick off their campaign for the world title on Saturday against Kazakhstan before meeting Serbia on Sunday.